1MDB: What did Goldman know and when?/ Plausible deniability

Goldie is Trump’s go to bank for senior personnel for his administration. Maybe because it knows how to do shady deals using other people’s money while being able to claim plausible deniability: “We know nothing. Nothing.”

FROM NYT Dealbook

A 1MDB Cloud

Goldman Sachs may find its profile improving under the Trump administration, but the firm is also coming under heavy scrutiny related to an investigation into a sprawling international money laundering and embezzlement scheme.

Prosecutors have said that billions of dollars that Goldman raised for the government investment fund 1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB, were channeled into personal bank accounts and ultimately used to buy paintings, luxury real estate and investment stakes in movies like “The Wolf of Wall Street.”

The question investigators are asking now is, how much did Goldman know?

Goldman said it believed the money was being used to buy legitimate assets for the investment fund.

Jack Blum, a lawyer who led corruption investigations for several Senate committees, said that Goldman should have done a thorough investigation of what 1MDB was doing with the money.

“It is a very serious problem when a company is making a hell of a lot of money out of something and everybody in the place says, ‘I don’t know about it,’” Mr. Blum said.